Month: December 2010

No other new details have been released at this time.

Smith shot himself to death in a Hollywood apartment building Wednesday evening recently had bragged that he committed the murder and that he was going to get paid for it, a former neighbor said.

Smith — a reported ex-convict described by a building resident as a “strange” man who loved his bicycle — committed suicide shortly after 6 p.m. Wednesday in the Harvey Apartments on Santa Monica Boulevard, where Beverly Hills police were serving a search warrant.

The Harvey Apartments are in the 5600 block of Santa Monica Boulevard, near Western Avenue.

Harold Smith was described as a tall, thin black man in his 40s.

He recently bragged that he killed Chasen and he was going to get $10,000 for it, former neighbor Terri Gilpin said in a number of broadcast media reports.

“He bragged all the time that he was the one who killed the publicist, and he was always talking about how he was going to get paid $10,000 for it,” Gilpin said in a televised interview.

A resident of the Harvey Apartments who said his name was Pete but declined to give his last name, told a news video cameraman that the suspect who shot himself always had his bicycle with him, kept it in in his apartment and talked about it when he engaged in small talk with neighbors.

Police investigating the suspect’s suicide collected a bicycle from the dead man’s apartment as evidence, RMG News reported.

Chasen was shot five times in the chest at close range at about 12:30 a.m. Nov. 16 while she was driving her Mercedes-Benz sedan near Whittier Drive and Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, according to police accounts.

She was on her way home from a party after the premiere of the movie “Burlesque,’ and Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad two weeks ago said police had determined Chasen was the intended target of the shooting.

Chasen was shot through the passenger window of her late-model Mercedes-Benz E-350 as she made a left onto Whittier from Sunset, Delshad told reporters.

The shots fired at Chasen came from a “high angle” and police initially entertained the possibility the shooter had been in a sport utility vehicle, according to Delshad.

The Beverly Hills Police Department put out a statement Wednesday after the suicide shooting saying, “At approximately 6 p.m. on 12-01-10, the Los Angeles Police Department responded to a call of ‘Shots Fired’ in the 5600 block of Santa Monica Boulevard.

“When they arrived, a male subject (No Further Description) had sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

“He was later pronounced dead at the scene. At the time of the shooting, Beverly Hills Police Department detectives were on scene conducting a follow-up investigation.

“There were no other injuries related to the incidents.

“Due to the fact that this is an ongoing investigation, there are no further details available at this time.”

Four law enforcement sources told the Los Angeles Times that detectives considered the man who shot himself a suspect in Chasen’s killing.

The sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified because the investigation was ongoing, said detectives received information suggesting that the man would be in his apartment on Wednesday evening.

The man had been under surveillance for some time, the sources told The Times.

When police officers approached him in the lobby of the apartment building, he backed up and refused their orders to raise his hands, The Times reported.

The man then pulled out a pistol and shot himself in the head, the sources said. He died at the scene.

Brandon Harrison told The Times that Harold described himself to other residents as an ex-convict who served two stints in state prison, the most recent for weapons and drug convictions.

Harold said he would never go back to prison, according to Harrison.

“He told me several times, ‘If it ever came back down to me going to prison, I would die first,’ ‘, Harrison told The Times.

The man moved into the building some months ago, Harrison said, but was evicted.

Harold had returned to the building repeatedly and asked Harrison and others if police had been looking for him, according to The Times.

Harrison told The Times that Harold said he was supposed to be getting $10,000, either for a job he did or from a lawsuit.

Harrison said he had no way of corroborating Harold’s claims.

“The man was very strange,” Harrison told The Times.

Chasen’s killing shocked Hollywood professionals and gossip junkies, and it sparked speculation from armchair detectives far and wide.

Her friends believed Chasen left the “Burlesque” post-premiere party planning to drive to her condominium on Wilshire Boulevard near the grounds of the Los Angeles Country Club.

Several residents in the neighborhood called 911 at the time of the attack, saying they heard gunshots.

Moments later, another resident called 911 to report hearing a car crash into a light pole.

People on Whittier Drive who heard the crash ran to the scene and found Chasen bleeding and slumped over the steering wheel of her Mercedes.

The passenger-side window was shattered.

The Harvey Apartments are home to a diverse mix of tenants who pay month-to-month rents, including a number of elderly people and others on fixed incomes, as well as younger people, The Times reported.

Gilpin, 46, said she stepped out of the elevator and saw blood splattered on the ground floor.

Gilpin said she had heard what sounded like a car backfiring.

“I really didn’t think anything of it,” Gilpin told The Times, “because I was kind of drowsy.”

Then a neighbor knocked on her door saying someone had been shot.